Attempt at settlement in the West 283
increased, the anxiety of the princes concerning the succession to the
Empire became manifest. Henry of Bavaria and Otto of Swabia, with
bishops and other nobles, met together and agreed, in the event of the
king's death, to elect as his successor Otto's nephew Henry, who had
followed Otto in the Lorraine palatinate, and was likewise a nephew of
the king's confidant, Archbishop Herman, and a grandson of Otto II.
The king recovered. Happily for the schemers, he was not a Tudor;
but the occurrence must have deepened his regret when the child
just at this time born to him proved to be another daughter. This
eldest daughter of Henry and Agnes, Matilda, died in her fifteenth
year as the bride of Rudolf of Swabia, the antagonist of her brother
Henry IV.
The year 1046 opened again, as so many before and after it, with
misery to the country people. In Saxony there was widespread disease
and death. Among others died the stout old Margrave Eckhard, who,
" wealthiest of margraves," made his kinsman the king his heir.
The king, after attending Eckhard's funeral, turned to the Nether-
lands, where Duke Godfrey's incapable younger brother, Gozelo Duke
of Lower Lorraine, was dead1; here too Count Dietrich (Theodoric) of
Holland was unlawfully laying hold on the land round Flushing, be-
longing to the vacant duchy.
At Utrecht, where he celebrated Easter, Henry prepared one of his
favourite river campaigns against Dietrich. Its success was complete,
both the lands and the count falling into Henry's hands. Flushing was
given in fief to the Bishop of Utrecht, and Henry, keeping Pentecost at
Aix-la-Chapelle, determined to settle once for all the affairs of Lorraine.
The means he used would appear to have been three: the concilia-
tion of Godfrey, the strengthening of the bishops, and the grant of Lower
Lorraine to a family powerful enough to hold it. At Aix Godfrey,
released from Gibichenstein, threw himself at Henry's feet, was "pitied,"
and restored to his dukedom of Upper Lorraine. This transformation
from landless captive to duke might have conciliated some; but
Henry did not know his man. Duke Godfrey's hereditary county of
Verdun was not restored, but granted to Richard, Bishop of the city.
Lower Lorraine was given to one of the hostile house of Luxemburg,
Frederick, brother of Duke Henry of Bavaria, whose uncle Dietrich
had long held the Lorraine bishopric of Metz.
At the same assembly there took place an event of importance for
the North and in the history of Henry's own house, viz. the investiture of
Adalbert, Provost of Halberstadt, with the Archbishopric of Bremen,
the northern metropolis, which held ecclesiastical jurisdiction, not only
in the coast district of German Saxony, but in all the Scandinavian
lands and over the Slavs of the Baltic.
1 For the evidence of Gozelo's death.., rather than disgrace, see Steindorff, i.
fce.
>. H. VOX* III. OH. XXX. 19